


repose

by Quilly



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Extended Metaphors, Fluff, HMCWTIYS, M/M, Naked Cuddling, Purple Prose, UsedtobeHMC's WTIYS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-13 17:54:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28657548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quilly/pseuds/Quilly
Summary: There is much to be said for sunlight and saltwater. Crowley contemplates all of it as Aziraphale holds him.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 43





	repose

**Author's Note:**

> For UsedtobeHMC's Write This In Your Style on Instagram! Shorter and far more flowery than my usual but omG you guys, the inspo drawing hit me at the most opportune moment and I couldn't stop. Sometimes you've just got to write about long confusing metaphors and get your wires crossed in the pursuit of naked cuddling.

It is quiet and still, in the After.

The events leading up to the After are well-known, well-documented (or, at least, they are to a Certain Someone, and the rest of the Universe is left to muddle through towards something better). The events leading up to this particular moment of After are, in part, cleverly obfuscated, a trick of smoke and mirrors for a boggled audience not expecting the show nor watching for the tells. As for the rest of the details, the wheres and whys and hows, it’s unimportant. The important bit is that Crowley and Aziraphale are breathing together, skin-to-skin.

It’s momentous, really, regardless of whether their intimacy is the worn-out rest after an explosion of pent-up passion, or a quiet taking of shelter after lifetimes of being unable to truly relax in each other’s company. An effort has been made for comfort, though whether or not it also involves a certain kind of Effort is entirely their business. The sureties are this: there is Crowley, there is Aziraphale, there are nude corporations taking in the most basic of human comforts known and instinctive from infancy, and there are tear tracks meandering listlessly from Crowley’s eyes in a sideways pattern from where his head is pillowed in an angelic chest.

Crowley is warm. Aziraphale’s broad hands have seen to that, spreading care in slow, long strokes across Crowley’s starving skin. It’s all Crowley could ever have asked for, being held and cherished, fed even as his own limbs and weight feeds. The tears were a surprise. But Aziraphale held Crowley through the worst of it and holds him now, Aziraphale’s indulgent mouth pressed in the most firm and staunch of kisses against Crowley’s scalp for the past…however long it’s been. Time means little in this comfortable golden bubble of security. And blankets. Can’t forget the blankets.

“Darling,” Aziraphale murmurs, baritone rumbles in Crowley’s skull, “are you happy?”

Is Crowley happy? He’s sure he must be, though the fresh wave of moisture from his eyes would normally suggest otherwise. Crowley is not sure how to process a rising tide when it isn’t fury or heartbreak, when it’s not following a tragic moon. Altogether a different celestial body, calling forth his saltwater this time.

He nods, belated, because anything that threatens the rising dawn of Aziraphale’s smile is intolerable. He tries to move—to shift, to pat Aziraphale’s shoulder, his flank, whatever is within reach—and finds himself boneless, as relaxed as any decent basking serpent. Aziraphale chuckles. Kisses his hair again, and again.

“Just checking.” The warm syrup of Aziraphale’s voice fills Crowley’s ears, his nose, his mouth, flushing out the salt. “I can hardly believe how lucky I am, myself, to hold you now. It’s been…it’s been so long. So long.”

Crowley wants to frown. To correct the ledger, to state, emphatically, that it is Crowley who is the lucky one, Icarus finding the bosom of the sun, a crawling cold sea-thing stilled and at home in a longed-for embrace and warm waters. The words are too big, too much, and all at once too little.

There will be time, Aziraphale’s fingertips across Crowley’s shoulder blades promise. There will be time, soothe the firm, steady fingers as they travel through Crowley’s hair, through his pride and joy and vanity, as they coax sunlight through Crowley’s being and lull his snake’s heart to drowsiness. For once, Crowley doesn’t want to sleep—doesn’t want to wake up, for fear of losing this little moment of eternity. Creation had a timetable—on the first day, the light. On the third, the banishing of the sea, and the fifth, all creatures therein. By the seventh, it was done, and never would be created again. Crowley hadn’t seen it. Crowley had been cradling star-stuff in his hands, superheated but not touching and filling him the way Aziraphale’s light does, the first warmth he’s ever known since being cast down with wings useless against the Fall. Icarus landed in the sea. Crowley wonders if it was cold, too, after flying so close. He and Aziraphale flew close, too, and Crowley wonders if it will be enough. If they’re merely in the eye, and the storm is approaching again. If, given that stars have their own life cycles, that means Aziraphale and his sun-bright warmth also has an expiration date, and if Crowley sleeps now, if they’ll reach it sooner rather than late.

He manages a single grunt, a single feeble clutching of Aziraphale’s chest, and Aziraphale’s hand envelops his, gentle and warm. Aziraphale’s other hand doesn’t stop paying quiet homage to the only piece of warmth Crowley has, red as flames and wild on his head. And quite possibly connected to his own personal off switch, if the waves of heavy exhaustion are anything to go by. Still, he resists being dragged into the depths, warm as they are.

“Sleep, beloved,” Aziraphale murmurs, whispers like featherdown, no wax to weigh them down, dancing in golden sunbeams. “Sleep, and I will guard you. Sleep.”

Crowley fights it as long as he can. Thinks of Icarus, of the sea, of feeling cold in a bookshop fire. Wet, too. Salt on his face.

“Sleep,” Aziraphale whispers, soothing, shushing like quiet waves, or leaves in the wind. Sunlight makes no sound; Crowley will have to rethink his metaphors, one day. Right now, Aziraphale is asking him to do something, and Crowley is nothing if not a simple shoreline, obeying the push and pull at the center of his own orbit.

He exhales, somehow releasing a last moment of tension he hadn’t realized he was holding as Aziraphale squeezes him, just once, pushing out the last of the cold, anxious saltwater from Crowley’s lungs. He’s asleep before the next inhale, golden sunlight on his tongue, warmest skin to warming skin. Primal comforts, creature appetites. Crowley sleeps feeling safe and loved and secure, and it is good.

**Author's Note:**

> Quillyfied on tumblr, quillydoodle on instagram if terrible, deeply unskilled art is your jam!


End file.
